The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

  “Something we can do for you?” the woman asked impatiently, her eyes as black and tiny as the heads of carpet tacks.

  “We’ve come to see Andrew Carpenter,” I stammered.

  She bellowed into the apartment, “Hey! Turkey! You got visitors!”

  “Don’t be rude. Ask them in,” Carp quietly commanded.

  The woman shrugged her big shoulders, motioned us inside, and closed the door.

  I advanced nervously, my head bent forward. All over the floor were empty beer cans and jar lids filled with cigarette butts. Next to Carpenter’s stocking feet was half a bottle of red wine. He sat rigid in a chair in the center of the room. I was afraid we had stumbled in on something that shouldn’t be stumbled in on, but when my eyes finally reached Carpenter’s face, I found his smooth cheeks pocked with two enormous dimples and a grim that lifted his eyeglasses halfway up his forehead. “Why, hello there,” he said warmly. “What brings you people down here tonight?”

  “Cordial visit,” I said, working up a smile. Cathy stared at the red-haired woman. “We thought you might like company on your big election night. If we’re disturbing any—”

  “Marsha’s my co-worker.” Carpenter waved his cup at Marsha, who was studying Cathy. “We had Marsha’s gang of undergrads over earlier, but they wanted to get drunk and we’d run out of beer. Political campaigns are supposed to be kept well oiled with alcohol. I keep forgetting that fact.” Carp himself did not seem at all well oiled; he spoke with his usual sober cheerfulness. “Marsh. These are the friends I was telling you about. That’s Cathy there. And her husband is Scott.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Marsha said with a smirk. She looked somewhere in her late twenties and wore jeans and a floppy, untucked shirt. Whenever she moved, her breasts bounced inside the shirt like a pair of cats squirming in a bag. She spoke with a deep, bearish voice. “You’re the insurance salesman.”

  “Oh, nothing that adventurous,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I don’t do any actual selling. I just march figures up and down sheets of paper and make sure they all arrive at the same place. Like the exercises they gave you over and over again in third grade, only now I get paid for it.”

  “If you don’t like your work, get out of it,” she said and turned to Carpenter. “You need more chairs. I’ll get the one in the bedroom.”

  “You sit here,” said Carpenter, setting his own chair beside Cathy. She smoothed her coat behind her and cautiously lowered her bottom to the chair. She looked down at the radio that sat on the floor, tuned to an AM station. “Marsha’s,” Carp explained.

  No, I didn’t like Marsha. And it worried me that she was familiar with Carpenter’s bedroom.

  “Well, what do you think your chances are with the election?” I asked, trying to forget about Marsha.

  “He doesn’t want to get elected,” Marsha snarled, bringing in the chair. She pushed the chair at me and added, “He’s chicken. If he thought he might win, he’d never run.”

  Carpenter only smiled at the attack and drank his wine. More cups were brought out; Carpenter sat cross-legged on the floor and poured the rest of the bottle. “Marsha’s an interesting person,’’ he said, watching the liquid rise to the same level in each cup. “The token southpaw in the V.C.U. sociology department. According to her, I’m much too conservative, Tory radical. Oh well. I’ve been called worse.” Marsha snorted in agreement. “But it’s thanks to her that my name’s splashed all over town. She’s got the kind of dedication rarely found outside a meeting of Young Republicans.”

  “Screw you,’’ said Marsha.

  More insults followed, and the exchange turned into an argument on politics. Marsha insisted on the need for strong, decisive action. Carpenter advocated a quieter approach. They spoke as though Cathy and I weren’t even there. I was able just to sit and watch for clues to their relationship. It was Marsha’s strident tone that worried me most; she seemed positively marital, as if she already had him. In Carp’s voice, I found nothing. He spoke just as he always did, spinning his ideas with his slow, rural drawl. The southside Virginia accent didn’t match the ideology under discussion. It made me think of Gary Cooper cast as Trotsky. Cathy was looking lost and bored and I felt guilty for having misled her. Every now and then I tried to give her a special glance and a nod to let her know she had my sympathy. Her cup of wine sat on her knee untouched. She answered my concern with a brittle smile.

  “I know you’ve heard me say it a hundred times,” Carp said. “But if you’re going to be a southpaw in this country, you’ve got to keep your goals limited.”

  “Must be pitiful to be a defeatist at such an early age,” said Marsha.

  “Perhaps. But when you have big plans, it’s easier to become disillusioned. You get disappointed, maybe over­react, and end up on the other side.”

  “I hear you,” said Marsha. She greeted the possibility with a lip fart, then shifted her nail eyes towards me. “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Me? What?” The need to answer took me by surprise. “No, I was never . . . I’ve been friends with Carp but I . . . at no time. No. I’ve not been a socialist. Never.” I looked around the room for help.

  “No,” said Carp, smiling kindly. “Scottie’s always been a capitalist lackey.”

  “I see,” said Marsha, leaning back. “Very good. I was afraid you were a sellout. But you’re the real thing, huh?”

  I assured her I was, and attempted a few jokes about the sins I’d committed in the name of the oppressor class. None of the jokes took, and Marsha began to hammer at me about the half-heartedness of my beliefs. Why this? What did I really think about the world I lived in? Carpenter had never violated me in this way, never poked and forced me to twist my feelings into ideas I knew nothing about. I waited for him to come to my aid again, but he simply sat there, amused by what was going on. He had a misplaced faith in my ability to defend myself. Cathy was too lost or bored to help me. I was left to myself, and trotted out the only argument I have ever used on the subject of revolution. “Suppose . . . suppose you’re a fish living in a dirty bowl. You got the choice of either putting up with the filth and mess of the dirty water or you can jump out, flop around on the carpet. Maybe get eaten by the cat. So I’ve decided to stay in the bowl and accept all the imperfections as part of life.” I have always been a little proud of that argument without completely believing it. I folded my arms together, assuming that would be the final word and that we could move on to more interesting questions. Such as was Marsha sleeping with Carpenter?

  Marsha slammed her heel against the floor. “You can change the bowl you live in, you smug little jerk.”

  Cathy suddenly woke up “What’re you two getting so nasty for?” she muttered to her shoes. “You’re only talking about ideas. Nothing to get nasty about.”

  “That’s only what they want us to believe,” said Marsha, leaning closer to Cathy and speaking to her as if to an equal. “That these things are only ideas. They want us to believe that there’s real life over here, and ideas over there, and no connection between the two.” Marsha glared at me. “And they want us to think that real life is only a dirty fishbowl you can never change but only talk about. Like the weather.”

  “In Marsha’s mind, they are men,” Carpenter explained, shaking his head and not making it clear whether or not he agreed with her.

  Marsha began to twist a strand of her hair around one finger. “That’s a vulgarization of what I believe,” she muttered, then picked up the wine bottle and examined it. “Empty,” she said. “Pitiful the party has to end so soon. We ought to get some more wine.”

  I jumped out of my chair and rubbed my hands together. “No, it’s getting late, I’m afraid. Cathy and I should be moving on.”

  Cathy looked up at me over her shoulder. “We don’t have to go, do we, Scott? It won’t hurt us to stay a little longer.”

  “You
want to stay?” She surprised me. I looked her up and down, wondering about her motives. It seemed masochistic for her to want to stay any longer. “Well. Whatever you say,” I said reluctantly. I was afraid of making a scene by insisting we leave. “Uh, since I’m up,” I said to Carpenter, “why don’t

  I go get the wine?”

  Marsha rose, clomped over to the desk and picked up an Army jacket. “I’ll go too.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Hey, Marsh. Why don’t you stay here?” said Carp.

  “Nope.” She turned to me. “I can show you the best place,” she insisted, and before I could object again, Marsha and I were outside, headed for the car. With her sneakers planted on my dashboard, Marsha gave directions.

  As soon as we were moving down the street she turned to me and said, “Tell me. I’m curious. How come you’re foisting your wife on poor old Carp?”

  I couldn’t understand what she was talking about and spent a good twenty seconds trying to understand before I finally said, “Come again?”

  “She’s in love with him, isn’t she? I always thought your kind kept their wives locked up whenever something like that happens. Never imagined a husband would offer personal delivery. I guess I should find it admirable.” She tittered through her nose. “Unless it’s just bourgeois kinkiness.”

  This was hilarious. I couldn’t believe it. I nearly choked trying to hold back my laughter. She was so damn right in her general picture of what was going on. And so damn wrong in the particulars. “You know, you’re nuts,” I said. “What gives you a crazy idea like that?”

  “Come off it. You don’t have to pretend with me. Sweet little things like that can never hide their feelings. Soon as she walked in, the place smelled like love and kisses.”

  “My wife is no ‘sweet little thing,’” I said, dutifully going to Cathy’s defense.

  “But she is. Sweet, frail, Cosmopolitan girl. Not her fault, though.”

  I didn’t like to hear Cathy mocked like this. “I can’t . . . I can’t imagine how you’d see what you see. You wouldn’t talk like that unless you were in love with Carpenter yourself.”

  “Me?” There was a laugh like pebbles dropping onto a snare drum. “If I ever fall in love—and I won’t—it’ll never be for the likes of good old Carp.”

  “Then why are you being such a bitch about it?”

  “I merely report the obvious.”

  We pulled up in front of a delicatessen. Marsha ran inside with long, leaping strides. Cathy in love with Carpenter. Husband delivering wife. Sweet little thing. Very droll. I kept turning it around and around in my head until Marsha returned with the wine.

  Marsha kept her mouth shut for several minutes. I was hoping for complete silence, when she suddenly shifted sideways in her seat and confessed, “I’m needling you. Scott. Can’t you see that? I have no objections to what you’re doing. It goes along with everything I believe. Sexual democracy.” She came closer to me. “But I’m curious why you’re doing it. It’s not the norm for people of your ilk. Something like this runs against the grain, doesn’t it? Or are you and your wife so bored you’ll jump at anything?”

  “My ilk? You think you have me pegged, don’t you?”

  “I know you a lot better than you think. You’re one of those types who thinks to himself, ‘I’m complicated. I’m so wonderfully complicated.’” She mimicked my thoughts with a squeaky whimper. “And you take great pride in it. Cozy sensitivity. But, you know? You’re not really so complicated. A few contradictions, a few hypocrisies. Things you could reconcile if you put your mind to it. Only you don’t want to bother. It would put an end to the cozy notion you’re a deep person.”

  Marsha settled back into her seat. I was relieved to have some distance between us again. I took refuge in silence.

  “Of course, you realize your wife doesn’t have a black man’s chance with Carp.”

  I refused to rise to the bait.

  “Perfect nickname. Carp. He’s a cold fish, all right.” She waited for a reply, then snidely added, “Your wife might as well be flirting with a fag.”

  “Carp’s gay?” I asked, trying to hide my sudden interest.

  She shifted her big shoulders. “I don’t know. You know him better than I do. Is he?”

  One of the many idiotic things about the whole idiotic mess was the fact that I did not know Carpenter’s sexual affiliation. Through all the years of our friendship, all the letters and visits, there had never been mention of a girlfriend and never any mention of the alternatives. Whenever the subject of love or lust came up, Carpenter only smiled and wiggled his head until the subject went away.

  “Don’t know,” I said to Marsha.

  “Might as well be for all the luck she’s going to have. Couldn’t get him to do anything with me,” she said, and sighed, “much less fall in love. Not that I’d want that. The love part, I mean.”

  “You asked Carpenter to go to bed?”

  “Why not?” she said, wistfully indifferent.

  “And what did he say?”

  “I think he laughed. Carpenter can be a jerk.”

  When we arrived at the apartment, Marsha made a big show of stomping noisily up the stairs, as if to warn them of our return. There was a clownish grin on her face.

  We entered and found Cathy and Carpenter exactly as we had left them, seated six feet apart. Cathy’s look of discomfort was gone; she appeared relaxed and easy, and not even Marsha’s return disturbed her. The radio had been changed to an FM station: a baroque fanfare of trumpets added to the happiness.

  “Mountain chablis,” Marsha announced proudly, stripping the bag from the bottle. She broke the seal and the wine was passed around while we returned to our positions in the circle. I tried to be sociable by asking for news of the election.

  “Andy’s writing a book,” Cathy declared. She was quite excited that Carpenter had confided this to her; the outcome of the election seemed to interest her as little as it did the candidate.

  “He’s always writing some book,” I said. “What’s this one about?”

  “It’s, uh, fictional institutions.”

  Carpenter politely corrected her. “Institutional fictions. Assumptions about reality that make up the basis of different social institutions.” He gave himself an embarrassed sigh.

  Marsha smiled at me, apparently reading my thoughts and highly amused by them. But she could not have been reading them correctly. I gave no consideration at all to her goofy ideas about Cathy’s affections. Marsha was a joker, I decided. I felt a fondness for her now that I knew she had failed and that I wouldn’t have to compete against her. And I felt a great fondness for Cathy because she seemed happy now and I no longer had to feel responsible for her discomfort. I was set free to sit back and enjoy the fact that I was in love with Carpenter.

  Marsha left shortly after midnight, and things became very peaceful. There were times when there was nothing to say, but there was no embarrassment over the stretches of silence.

  As Cathy and I got ready to leave, Carpenter said he was pleased the nonsense was over and that he’d be free to see us more often. There was a prolonged exchange of smiles and handshakes, then Carp watched from his open door as Cathy and I made our way down his stairs.

  The interior of the car was cold as a refrigerator; the heater did not begin to ease the cold until we were halfway to the suburbs. Cathy stretched over the console and huddled close to my side.

  My head ticked with possibilities. In the narrow space of a couple of hours, I had found my path blocked and then had found the obstacle totally imaginary. Carpenter was available after all; my love had come through the ordeal stronger than before and I knew I would have to act on it. I would take my chances; I would actually do something with this incredible feeling I carried. There would be love, out in the open, dangerous love, love so strong it w
ould be indistinguishable from fear. The only question was how to move Carpenter to join me in it.

  “You’ve certainly been spacy tonight,” said Cathy, her face buried in my coat.

  “Yeah? Just toward the end. I got to thinking about things. You were pretty spacy yourself. At the beginning.”

  “Was I?” she asked sleepily. “Yeah, I guess so. We’re not the world’s greatest guests. Wonder if we could get tutored somewhere on social charm. Take night classes in party behavior, maybe.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Oh, doesn’t matter. I think we could’ve acted any old way and Andy wouldn’t have minded. Scott? Did you think that girl and Andy were lovers? I mean when we first walked in, did you think that?”

  “Hard to imagine her being anyone’s lover. Too dogmatic. Too much the—you know.” I wanted to say “bitch” but the word angers Cathy. “Why? Did you think that?”

  “At first. But I talked to Andy while you were out and I got the impression they were barely friends. She really was too dogmatic. I feel sorry for people like that. They must be very lonely before they can go and get like that.”

  I had heard Cathy express similar sympathy for her father, for my older brother, and before she had met him, for Andrew Carpenter. When I stopped at the next traffic light, I was able to bend over, kiss the top of her head, slip my hand beneath her long hair, touch the down on her neck.

  There was eerie energy in our lovemaking that night. Sex again became the invention of two teenagers petting under the bushes, only with adult privacy now, and no restraints. Each intimate move was smoothly answered and there was a slippery, licensed roving of hands and mouths. I did not fake any of it. I could not pretend it was Carpenter who shared me. No, it was definitely Cathy whose knees and shoulders, breasts and hair were the targets of all my energy and it was irrelevant that the energy had been created by my feelings for Carpenter.

  In that extended instant after sex, before you remember you are not alone, I felt pleased with myself and the life I lived. Gradually, I reawakened to Cathy, and found her looking at me with one open eye.